Tuesday, June 30, 2009

スパム My blog was finally hit by Sexy the Japanese spammer that has already hit everyone else’s blog. I truly do not understand the purpose of this. It took me an hour to delete it off all the pages. Translation at Google didn’t clear up the purpose of this. It translated into random words. It did give me a chance to respond to some of the bloggers that I hadn’t gotten around to. Seems like I run around lately like a chicken with its head cut off. Do people say that anymore? It was one of my grandmother’s sayings.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Lately we’ve had a sudden influx of books that need editing. I barely finish one when another comes in. The last couple days we’ve had three novels arrive FedEx that are in the page proof stage. For those of you who don’t know what page proofs are, they are preliminary versions of publications. They are unbound, and in some cases electronic. They are created as part of the proofreading and copyediting processes, but can be used for promotional and review purposes also. At this stage most of the mistakes should be already corrected. Usually mistakes we find are from what was corrected in copy edit stage and entered incorrectly. At this point I’ve read the book so many times that it is sometimes hard to catch mistakes. This would be my last chance to catch a mistake. It really bothers me when something stupid doesn't get fixed. For example in Frankly My Dear, I’m Dead I did not catch that I had Margaret Mitchell’s husband down as John Walsh. His name is John Marsh. I knew this, but for some reason my brain didn’t catch it. That still bugs me. Let’s hope my brain is sharper this week. I'd better eat some fish.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

I wasn't sure what to expect for a cover with the title Killer Crab Cakes. I visualized a crab waving around a gun or knife. No crabs, but it is a nice colorful cover. The book is set in Rockport, Texas where James and I spent a month researching and working. He actually wrote a book and a half while were were down there while I researched, plotted, and cooked seafood. I'm much, much slower at this process than he is. It took a second trip down there to finish writing the book. Unfortunately we couldn't spend a second month down there. The second trip was just for a week, but the last touches were put on the book in Rockport.

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Livia J Washburn

About LJW

Under the names Livia J. Washburn and L.J. Washburn, Livia Reasoner has been writing award-winning, critically acclaimed mystery, western, romance, and historical novels for more than thirty years. She began to write in collaboration with her husband, author James Reasoner, and soon branched out into telling her own stories.

In addition to writing, Livia enjoys cooking and all aspects of publishing. She feels incredibly lucky that she's had a successful mystery baking series with NAL, and that as secretary of Western Fictioneers she's been able to publish at least 30 books in the last 3 years. A good day for her includes having time to create something new in the kitchen, on a story, and a great new cover.